Patrick Chiles's Blog, page 12

Put Your Eye Out, You Will

Whether or not you’re a fan of Star Wars, I think we can all agree that lightsabers are just about the coolest sci-fi invention evah. In which case, be prepared to shriek like a little girl and soil your britches: …I can’t decide if it’s more important researchers at MIT and Harvard have just managed […]

By Their Fruits Shall Ye Know Them

Pogroms didn’t end with the Nazis, they just shifted their target: Can We Finally Start Talking About the Global Persecution of Christians? To weed out the infidels, according to news reports, the terrorists asked people for the name of Muhammad’s mother or to recite a verse from the Quran. And that wasn’t even the worst […]

I’m Famous!

…at least within my immediate circle of friends. After pitching this to them four years ago, Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine finally ran my article about a rather challenging trip with a Boeing Business Jet (a VIP 737) into a little place in the Himalayas called Paro. From where I sat, it looked nuts: The […]

Another Giant Leap

So this happened over the weekend: Yep. That’s a frog. As my kids say, “it sucks to suck.” If you’re looking for more of an artsy-fartsy take on last weekend’s launch, there’s always this: Meh. We now return you to this evening’s previously-scheduled jocularity…

Spaceport Houston

From across the pond, the UK Daily Mail on plans to turn Houston’s old Ellington Field into a commercial spaceport: The city announced yesterday that it had applied for a licence to build the United States’ latest and biggest spaceport, and has already drawn up a detailed proposal of what the state-of-the-art facility would look […]

Flying Blind

More on the unconstitutional harassment of private pilots from the Toledo Blade: The Aircraft Owners’ and Pilots’ Association, which represents small-plane owners and operators across the United States, said it has received dozens of complaints from members “subjected to random searches” by Customs and Border Protection, local police, or both. “None of the stops resulted […]

The Wages of Fighting City Hall

Remember Buckyballs? They were all the rage until a year or so ago. If you’re wondering what happened to them, read on…though if you have high blood pressure you’re guaranteed to blow an artery over this one: On July 10, 2012, the Consumer Product Safety Commission instructed Maxfield & Oberton to file a “corrective-action plan” […]

Liberty or Death

Regardless of your ideological bent, it’s clear that our nation is at an historical crossroads if not an outright impasse. Our federal government has gone off the rails established for it under the Constitution, and we are powerless to do anything about it. At least, if we’re counting on our elected representatives to do something […]

Gettin’ MAD

From the greatly-missed-by-the-blogosphere’s Don Surber (and if you haven’t friended him yet on Facebook, you’re wrong): Ebony goes with “We Are All Trayvon Martin Luther King” cover. Mad magazine goes with “We Are All Edward Snowden” cover. One cover is a juvenile over-simplification of a current event to sell magazines, while the other is Mad […]

Asteroids

…Nature’s way of asking, “How’s that space program coming along?” I reckon the answer to that particular question depends on where you’re looking. Turns out that last winter’s big explode-y meteor over Russia may have come from a whole pack of big explode-y meteors. Which means we could stand a good chance of running into […]